[GraemeA]

Cheers Graeme. Nice and simple then......

In 2020 the men's and women's finals will be on different days so the rest periods will be longer.

I guess it won't be on the back of the rest of the world championships either which will help.

Correct but it will be on the back of a Qualification round, which is effectively a speed qualification followed by a boulder semi final and a lead semi final. But there will be a days rest between Quals and Finals.

[Danny]

Speed not such a spanner in the works as I imagined it would be. Over quickly, and essentially a consequential warm-up for the bouldering and lead, which work well back-to-back.

On the contrary, a shit speed result is basically going to take you out of contention in the full scale comp with 20 climbers.

Hence a "consequential" warm up.

[Teaboy]

Or trampolines

[BRidal]

A new type of pad was used for the event, it had laser sensors across the surface of the pad to detect your foot movement, I believe previously the pads were simply a pressure sensor. Concensus was that it seemed to register your foot leaving the pad slightly differently, causing a lot of people to get caught out. Yoshiyuki and Chon both false started, knocking them out of contention for the combined. Boldyrev (current speed world cup leader) also false started, resulting in quite a spectacular chalk bag kick. 

[r-man]

I enjoyed the combined comps. Entertaining, as tomtom said, from the perspective of a channel hopping punter. It does seem that comps have been evolving to have more appeal to non climbers who might be half interested (eg. combined finals, shorter climbing times, massive increase in parkour problems) and less appealing to many people who really love climbing. But perhaps that's just how sports grow - and in every sport there are traditionalists who argue against change.

It was fun watching non speed specialists on the speed course, mainly because they were so different in their abilities. But despite appreciating the spectacle, I couldn't help but feel the head to head rivalry fundamentally distorted the whole competition. Someone on the other channel (was it you Graeme?) suggested that in this format, all three disciplines had equal weighting. This isn't true. In the speed event, a false start or fumbled hold from one climber directly benefits their rival,  and because all rankings are multiplied, this boost is transferred to the other two disciplines. In lead and bouldering, the competition is between climber and wall. Every climber's performance is equally weighted. When you add a multiplier from a head to head battle, equal weighting disappears.

In these comps, it doesn't look like the overall winner was affected, but silver (in the women's) and bronze (in both) might have been a different story without false starts and slips boosting some competitor's results.

So...I thought it was fun, but in my mind the speed event gave a few climbers an unfair boost. Anyone feel differently? Perhaps this just adds excitement to the proceedings?

[jwi]

I am not sure I understand; geometric average is way more forgiving than arithmetic average to people who are very bad in one event.

Example, 20 competitors.
20,1,1 is only possible to beat by 4,2,2 using geometric average, whereas it would be possible to beat by 17,2,2 using arithmetic average.

[r-man]

The issue is less with people doing badly, and more with their rival profiting more than the rest of the field from their mistake.

I'm sure there is maths to explain this effect, but I'm not a mathematician, so...

In the speed comp, Bob expects to do badly as he has the slowest personal record. But his rival (the fastest on paper) is disqualified with a false start. Bob gets through to the semis. His next opponent also messes up and Bob is through to the finals. Bob loses by a mile, but even though he records the slowest time of the day, he now has a ranking of 2. So two competitors fluffed it, but Bob benefited more than anyone else (unlike in bouldering or lead where everyone else would benefit equally).

Whatever ranking he now achieves in bouldering and lead will be multiplied by only 2. Which effectively means the false starts have disadvantaged everyone except Bob (and the winner of the speed round of course, who was delighted to face the slowest competitor in the finals!). Everyone else is now playing catch up to someone who did nothing to deserve having such a low score.

The issue is that there are two different ranking systems which don't multiply fairly - the man vs man knockout round of speed, and the man vs wall rounds of bouldering and lead. If the competitors in speed were ranked by the fastest time they achieved (ie. man vs wall), it wouldn't be an issue.*

*Here's an idea - in this scenario you could still have knockout rounds, which would reward those who progressed to semis and finals with more chances to record a faster time. Best of both worlds?

[teestub]

The two people Bob faced first made mistakes, if they hadn’t they would have beat Bob’s ass. Speed would be even less acceptable if it was just a time trial style one climber at a time thing.

[Footwork]

The issue is less with people doing badly, and more with their rival profiting more than the rest of the field from their mistake.

In the speed comp, Bob expects to do badly as he has the slowest personal record. But his rival (the fastest on paper) is disqualified with a false start. Bob gets through to the semis. His next opponent also messes up and Bob is through to the finals. Bob loses by a mile, but even though he records the slowest time of the day, he now has a ranking of 2. So two competitors fluffed it, but Bob benefited more than anyone else (unlike in bouldering or lead where everyone else would benefit equally).

Whatever ranking he now achieves in bouldering and lead will be multiplied by only 2. Which effectively means the false starts have disadvantaged everyone except Bob (and the winner of the speed round of course, who was delighted to face the slowest competitor in the finals!). Everyone else is now playing catch up to someone who did nothing to deserve having such a low score.

This sounds like something familiar    speed ice skating anyone

[Muenchener]

I watched the speed bit of the combined finals on youtube last night. And having watched a couple of actual speed climbing events recently, slow motion speed climbing was quite amusing.

[GraemeA]

I watched the speed bit of the combined finals on youtube last night. And having watched a couple of actual speed climbing events recently, slow motion speed climbing was quite amusing.

You said that on the other channel as well. But what you didn't say was that you had seen the likes of Tomoa (who fucked up with a FS) or Mikael Mawem (who isn't good enough at Lead but might get Top 20 in a real Combined) Speed climbing. Because they climb like Speed climbers, not WR standard but getting here - Tomoa was 21st in the Speed World Champs which is pretty incredible.

Daley Thompson or Jess Ennis weren't brilliant at all of their events but we celebrate them as great champions.

[Muenchener]

All very true. And I don't recall seeing Tomoa or Mikael (who presumably gets useful tips from his bro). But even Jan - whose times seem respectable to a naive viewer such as myself - still moves very differently from a real speed climber.

[Fiend]

Forgot to reply to this before.

So I've been pretty cynical about speed climbing and about the combined format, without knowing how it would work out in reality. Maybe that was naive or ignorant of me. So it was well worth having a combined practice at Innsbruck to see exactly what would happen, and what it was like as a regular fan and spectator....

























.....and exactly as anyone could predict it was shitting awful. What a pile of wank speedclimbing is and what a bigger pile of now-septic wank it's obligatory inclusion is. The only "less than utter shit" aspect is that it's over so quickly that it's very easy to skip over while viewing. Other than that, well the best it could aspire to as part of the format would be irrelevant, but no, instead it spoils the overall effect and celebration of the climbing challenge. The fact that a world class climber can get screwed over because they're not quite as good in the "performing monkey" farce would be a joke, except that it really happens. From what I recall (I've tried to block it out), Jakob just squeezed past Ondra in the bouldering but that was very close, then Ondra delivered a beautiful masterclass in precision and control on the lead.....and got royally fucked over because of speed. Jakob is great, but the best climber didn't win, solely because of speed. Fuck, and indeed, THAT.

Pity about the rain in China a couple of weeks back. The semis were still pretty entertaining.

[GraemeA]

"Then there is the Olympic Qualifying event near Toulouse in November 2019, 6 more get selected from this - this event is for those ranked 8-27 in the Overall Ranking from Tokyo."

I got this bit wrong, or it has changed. The athletes for Toulose will be picked from the Overall World Cup Ranking for 2019. Two scores from each discipline with relative ranking (ie only looking at those involved in the Overall) being the important aspect. then multiply the numbers.

It is a nightmare to predict as it can all change at the very last WC of the year if someone drops out before getting their 6 results logged.

[SA Chris]

Save me doing a lot of searching if anyone can recall;

Was talking to someone at work about the boulder problems often having many ways of doing them depending on strengths and weaknesses of competitors, and I recalled one of the comps having a start that involved swinging along on some volumes, that was done a few different ways, and the one of the strong guys (?) came along and pretty much did every move statically. Can't remember which comp though.

(I know this is a bit of a Maaargret? Question, just someone might remember!).

[Fiend]

Blue volumes, right to left, iirc. I know the one, it was ace to see the different ways around it. It was this season but can't remember the comp.

[User deactivated]

Meiringen 2018. Boulder 2 in the final. Jakob Schubert.

[joel182]

Meiringen 2018. Boulder 2 in the final. Jakob Schubert.

Good knowledge!
https://youtu.be/fBS0v29rACQ?t=8763

[SA Chris]

Thanks guys, that's the one. Definitely worth a rewatch.